


All the King's Men

by BlueKiwi



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 03:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueKiwi/pseuds/BlueKiwi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius finds himself befriending those of not-quite-like minds. From the Livejournal RP Xavier Institute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the King's Men

Marius was surprised that it hadn’t started raining yet. All day long it had looked as if the clouds were going to burst at any minute, as if a single stray breeze would send torrents of rain cascading down onto the noisy and silver-slicked narrow Manhattan streets. He hurried through Greenwich Village, pulling up the collar to his dark coat and trying to steady himself against the jostling of the crowd, many of whom kept an eye on the sky in case of a sudden downpour. He knew he was running ridiculously late, but that was because he still hadn’t quite worked out the subway’s timetable yet - he was so used to traveling about in taxis or chauffeured cars that the mere idea of the subway had resulted in about ten minutes of blank staring and minor panicking at the colorful and intricate map near the turnstiles.  
  
He ducked under the cafe awning just as a boom of thunder signaled the first drops of rain to litter the pavement. Unzipping his coat, he gave a nod to one of the barista, who simply jerked his head in the direction of the backroom, sliding a cup of coffee across the counter. Marius grabbed it, nearly spilled it, and then rushed across the wooden flooring and down a handful of steps into the backroom.  
  
There was always a sense of electric energy that ran through the windowless backroom of the cafe, the wall underneath the staircase covered in posters for poetry readings, eccentric rock bands, meetings for campus-variety political groups, and old and battered street signs. Every other wall was bare except for wall sconces, illuminating the handful of wooden tables and chairs and a beaten up green couch shoved into a corner, currently occupied by a blissfully snoring man. The tables themselves were littered with half-finished college papers and books covering subjects from Plato’s philosophies to the history of the French Republic to a smattering of language pamphlets.  
  
The occupants of the room, to the passing or untrained eye, were just a collection of young college students, but were obviously the source of that energy that permeated the room. Or, most noticeably, from the grinning green-eyed rascal who immediately spotted Marius entering into the room, jumped up from his seat at one of the messier tables and seemingly just magically appeared from that spot to Marius’s side, flinging an arm around his shoulder.  
  
“Marius, you’re late!”  
  
At this exclamation, Marius found himself under the amused (or disapproving) scrutiny of the others (except for the man on the couch, who just rolled over on the couch, turning his back to all of them). He flushed furiously before explaining, “I’m sorry. I...took the subway.”  
  
“Good god, man. Don’t tell me it was your first time.” One of the students, upon seeing a distraction from studying, leaned back in his chair, balancing on the back legs of it. “Haven’t you lived in Manhattan all of your life? That is... _comment dit-on_...ridiculous, yes?”  
  
The green-eyed young man steered him towards one of the less crowded tables, not quite pushing him onto one of the chairs before pulling one up himself and sitting in it backwards. “Marius,” he teased, his boyish French accent giving Marius’s name its correct pronunciation, “we could have made an adventure of it together. An entire day devoted to cavorting about in Washington Square Park and Chelsea, wooing the tourists in Times Square, and exclaiming over the food at the Rai Rai Ken. Do you like Japanese food, Marius?”  
  
Marius wasn’t so sure what he thought about that breathless declaration, and was about to proclaim that he really didn’t think that was necessary, one trip on the Manhattan subway system had been enough to last a lifetime, and he didn’t much care for food he couldn’t pronounce when the young man sitting across from them coughed pointedly and moved a set of papers across the table. “You should be studying instead.”  
  
“Tch! We still a month before finals-”  
  
“-which will be here before you know it.”  
  
Marius made no comment to either sides of the conversation, having heard the argument the last time he had been in this backroom. He had been told that it had been a common disagreement between the students, a rift between those who studied and those who preferred to devote their time to _anything_ other than law and its various incarnations. He brushed a hand through his hair absently, reaching for one of the newspapers covered in yellow sticky notes and far too neat handwriting. The article was following the latest news after the Senate fallout the previous week, a messy misunderstanding that had led to sharp-tongued, politically-incorrect outbursts, a disgraced Senator, and a victory for liberal enthusiasts. Marius was less than pleased how it had turned out, but for the moment, kept his mouth shut. It seemed to be a good idea.  
  
Heavy footsteps behind him signaled someone else entering the backroom and Marius turned to see another of the students, arms loaded down with books, the New York Times, and two large paper cups from the front register. As was probably usual, he was fussing.  
  
“He didn’t even cover his mouth. I bet he’s one of those people with that strand of flu I heard about from China.” He dumped his armload onto one of the tables before pulling the top off one of the cups, revealing a citrus-smelling tea. The young man began digging through his pockets, pulling out various packets of medicine and aspirin and vitamin tablets. “It has to be here. What if I get sick before finals? The flu! I swear it’s the bird flu!” He collapsed miserably in one of the chairs before spinning around and tugging the green-eyed student’s sleeve. “Tell me - do I look feverish?”  
  
With a completely serious expression, the other young man replied, “Why...yes - now that you mention it...”  
  
It took about five minutes to calm the excitable young man down with everyone (except the instigator who was laughing too hard and the man who was still sleeping on the couch) assuring him that no, he was not going to die or need to be rushed immediately to the hospital to be diagnosed. He still took about four different kinds of vitamins, pulled a bottle of cough medicine from his bag, and then kept nursing the tea as if it were his last defense against a platoon of bacteria and viruses, shooting visual daggers at the still grinning troublemaker.  
  
Having given up on trying to get any of them to study, the dark-haired man sitting across from Marius let out a long-suffering sigh, and, adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses that sat precariously on the bridge of his nose, returned to looking over Sartre’s works. Marius was tempted to lean forward to see exactly what he was scribbling in the wide margins of the book, but was stopped when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up - was he being watched? Casting a none-too-subtle glance around the room, he found himself meeting the eyes of the ill-dressed young man on the other side of the room. Having been caught staring, the redhead flushed and immediately buried his head back into the book of poetry on his lap - a ruse that may have worked if he hadn’t been so flustered and started reading the book upside down.  
  
A bald man with a dark complexion coughed and quietly said, “Your book...”  
  
The redhead blinked and focused on what he was reading...only to realize he hadn’t yet mastered the ability to comprehend Shakespeare upside down. He let out an embarrassed laugh and remarked, “Well, isn’t that something...”  
  
“I didn’t think you were quite that savvy when it came to literature,” the bald student chuckled, turning back to his own book but in doing so, knocking his cup of coffee over, spilling it all over the papers he had been writing on and an unfortunate Marius. Marius jumped up with a start while the green-eyed student yelped and dove to rescue his laptop, scooping it up seconds before a mix of coffee, cream, and sugar washed over it. Balancing it carefully in one hand, he gave the bald young man an incredulous look as he sighed and began mopping up his coffee. “Of course that would happen.”  
  
Marius winced, looking down at his jacket - the coffee had spilled down his right arm and a nice portion of the right side of his jacket. Slipping out of it, he quickly tried to ponder if there was a laundromat on the route home since the washer and dryer at the apartment complex he stayed at had decided to just stop working the previous night. From the steady drum of rain outside, he was glumly tempted to just go outside and stand there and let Mother Nature do its job, pollution be damned.  
  
“You’ll need vinegar if you’re going to wait for that,” someone suggested, and Marius turned to see a dark-haired man paging through a book in a language that could have been Spanish (or Portuguese or Italian - Marius really was no good at languages). He lifted his head and gave him Marius a small smile. “There’s a laundromat about a block north of here if you want to stop there after here. I passed it on my way from work.”  
  
“You work too much,” the bored student proclaimed, balling up the piece of paper he had previously been (not) studying. “How many jobs do you have this week?”  
  
He received a dark-eyed look of exasperation. “Four. Does it matter?”  
  
“Yes. You need to go out drinking more.”  
  
“There are people in other countries who don’t have the luxu-”  
  
“Drink. More.” More disruptions meant less schoolwork and he went back to balancing on the back legs of his chair, tossing a rolled-up piece of paper into the air over and over again. It was hard to say what exactly the contents of the paper had been before but judging from its identical siblings lying scattered around the table, it was anything but loved. He continued this for about two minutes before the green-eyed young man decided that the hypnotic tossing was far too much to take, and with a swift kick, knocked the chair back into place. The front legs hit the wooden floor with a loud thud, causing nearly everyone to look up from their activities - pencils paused in the middle of notes, books were lowered, tea was brought a little bit closer into protection - and for the man on the couch to finally lift his head and blearily blink at the gathering of students.  
  
“Has Apollo spoken of wars, guiding the hand of Paris who slays Achilles?” came the slightly slurred exclamation as the man rolled upwards, his hair mussed from sleep.  
  
The battered piece of paper fell to the ground, bouncing listlessly across the wooden floor to come and rest at the feet at the one person who hadn’t seemed startled by the crash. Still, everyone fell silent, glancing over at the bent head of bright golden curls that seemed to catch every bit of light in the room - Marius could have pulled out a pen and stabbed the hesitancy and respect in the air with ferocity and it would have spilled all over the tables just like the coffee.  
  
The blond man looked up then, capping his pen. “If you all insist on these distractions, we might as well discuss something productive,” he said quietly, his slight Southern drawl apparent even with those few authoritative words. He closed his notebooks before reaching for one of the newspapers just beyond his stack of law books, rising to his feet as he did so. Marius noted that when he spoke and when he moved, everyone’s attention was on him in some way or form - even at those simple words, it was as if some unseen force had changed those young men from mischievous college students who couldn’t be bothered with something as simple as studying to a force that was not only going to make the world rub its eyes and awake, but awake it with a start.  
  
It made him more than slightly aware of how much he didn’t really fit in here, how his involvement was a courtesy extended on behalf of his new roommate who, although suddenly displaying the traits one would expect from a lieutenant, still bounced from person to person, energetically retrieving their opinions on the current political issues that usually beleaguered most people. He watched, detached and bewildered, as the others began tossing ideas back and forth between each other - even the student surrounded by a depressing amount of wadded up paper was roused by the idea of possible confrontations with the police in order to make a statement regarding human rights. It was a world Marius thought himself familiar with after his father’s death, a world where he knew firmly where he stood. He wondered, in the midst of these minds that expressed thoughts so obscure to him, how he could have been more wrong.  
  
“It gets better.”  
  
Marius glanced across the table to see the young man with the glasses close his book and smile fondly in the direction of his brothers-in-arms. “Better?” Marius asked, doubt in his voice. While his friend had proclaimed him a student of their almost princely cause, he was still unsure. There were too many doubts, too many things left unsaid - unthought, even! - to claim himself a student of this small revolution. He suspected that once everything was said and done, even all the king’s men would not be able to put together this world.  
  
He kept his thoughts to himself, and only listened as the spiral of change continued from words spoken, and like a curious bird of prey, caught, examined, and finally freed.


End file.
